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Anne Spoerry
Anne Spoerry (13 May 1918 – 2 February 1999) was a French-born physician, based for most of her career in Kenya as a "flying doctor" affiliated with AMREF. Early life and education Anne Marie Spoerry was born in Cannes, France, the daughter of Henry Spoerry and Jeanne Schlumberger. Her brother was architect François Spoerry. As a girl she attended the Francis Holland School in London. While she was still in medical school in Paris, she joined the French resistance during World War II. She was arrested in 1943, and spent some time in the German concentration camp at Ravensbrück for her activities.John Heminway, "A Legendary Flying Doctor's Dark Secret" FT Magazine (21 May 2010). After World War II, Spoerry studied tropical medicine at the University of Basle.Fiammetta Rocco, "Obituary: Anne Spoerry" The Independent (9 February 1999). Career Anne Spoerry departed France for Africa in 1948, finding work as a doctor at a women's hospital in Yemen, and eventually settling in the Kenyan highlands, where she lived on a cooperative farm and practiced medicine. She also founded the first Girl Guides troop in the region.Fiammetta Rocco, "Obituary: Anne Spoerry" The Independent (9 February 1999). At Kenyan independence, she decided to stay and purchased a small farm for herself. In her forties, Spoerry learned to pilot a small plane so that she could practice medicine over a wider rural area, and reach island populations.Patrick Moser, "Anne Spoerry: Flying Legend of the Bush" UPI Archives (23 August 1987). In 1963 she became the first female member of the AMREF "Flying Doctors," delivering babies and administering vaccines along with other medical care. In her work, she also carried mail and basic supplies to remote locations.W. F. Deedes, "Mama Daktari's High Flying Life of Adventure" The Telegraph (3 January 2001)."Anne Spoerry" in Laura Lynn Windsor, Women in Medicine: An Encyclopedia (ABC-Clio 2002): 188. Richard Leakey praised Spoerry's work, saying, "She probably saved more lives than any other individual in east Africa – if not the whole continent."John Heminway, "A Legendary Flying Doctor's Dark Secret" FT Magazine (21 May 2010). Personal life Spoerry's memoir, On m'appelle Mama Daktari, was published in French in 1994.Anne Spoerry, [https://books.google.com/books/about/Mama_Daktari.html?id=Ya5IGwAACAAJ On m'appelle Mama Daktari] (J. C. Lattès 1994). Anne Spoerry died in 1999, age 80, after a stroke in Nairobi; she was buried on the island of Lamu.Fiammetta Rocco, "Obituary: Anne Spoerry" The Independent (9 February 1999). A team of seaborne doctors and veterinarians in the same archipelago named their project for Spoerry."The Anne Spoerry Sailing Doctors of Lamu" French Embassy in Nairobi (10 May 2010). After she died, Spoerry's experiences at Ravensbrück were revealed to have been more sinister than previously understood. In the 1940s, she had confessed to collaborating with Nazi prison officials by administering fatal doses of medication to others, when she was herself an inmate.Macharia Gaitho, "Revealed: The Darker Secrets of Kenya's Legendary Flying Doctor" Daily Nation (26 May 2010).Sarah Helm, [https://books.google.com/books?id=uAWjAwAAQBAJ Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women] (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 2015). References Category:1918 births Category:1999 deaths Category:Health in Kenya Category:People educated at Francis Holland School Category:French physicians Category:French aviators Category:Female aviators Category:French female aviators